Sun chief executive officer Scott McNealy talks candidly about his
company's adoption of a Linux strategy and his commitment to open
computing.
Earlier this week at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco,
Sun took a massive gamble by announcing its own Linux operating
system and Linux hardware. Support for open source is a brave step
for the company which has built a multi-billion dollar hardware and
software business around its proprietary Solaris Unix operating
system. Sun does not appear to have a good track record in the open
source community, but this week's news could be seen as a step by
the server giant to make amends.
You want to be seen as a steward of Linux. Why should we trust
Sun?
McNealy: We've been the driver for 20 years for Unix and
even though USL (Unix System Laboratories) tried to be the
benevolent dictator, they were incompetent. We ended up taking over
and we ended up driving the standard and we never closed up one API
on Solaris, even though we now ship all the other Unix systems
combined by a big number. We have never taken it proprietary. We've
got a dominant position in Unix today, and we've never done
anything to take advantage of that.
Now that you have embraced Linux, how do you remain credible
given the perception of Sun in the open source
community?
McNealy: I'm a believer in intellectual property ownership
and intellectual property rights. I'm always saying that, but I'm
also saying we'll live the Linux lifestyle in a whole bunch of
places. I believe there are multiple systems that can work and will
work and need to work and have to exist. We have donated spews of
code to the whole Linux thing. I think IBM and HP are scared to
death that people will understand how powerful we are in this
community.
How does embracing Linux and bundling products such as the mySQL
database with Linux affect your relationship with partners such as
Oracle?
McNealy: Oracle is embracing Linux and we're embracing
mySQL. I don't know that there is any issue. To say that Linux is a
threat to Solaris is like saying mySQL is a threat to Oracle 9i. If
you look and you ask [Oracle CEO] Larry Ellison, he'll tell you he
has two platforms: Linux and Solaris. Those are his two platforms.
You know what? Those are ours - not a problem.
You also seem to be saying that Linux is limited to two-way
processors and 32-bit computing. Is that going to be the case
forever?
McNealy: At some point when you go eight-way or 16-way, you're
dealing with large address spaces and you need 64-bit computing
because of the large data sets you're working with. We own that
market already with a compatible Sun ONE platform. So it doesn't
make sense for us to have a 64-bit Linux.